1390 The Zoologist — October, 1868. 



The Caribs. " Of the Caribs, the native inhabitants of the West 

 Indies, we need not speak, as of them little move remains than the 

 tradition that they once existed." In these few words the Select Com- 

 mittee of the House of Commons disposes of a people once as 

 numerous as the grains of sand on the sea-shore. 



Although the authorities I have consulted offer many other ex- 

 amples of races that have perished and not left a trace behind, these 

 are quite sufficient to show that species, or races, or families of men, 

 as numerous as those of the countries of modern Europe, have been 

 exterminated by the Caucasian so completely as to have left just 

 sufficient evidence to show that they once existed, and nothing 

 more. 



Let us now turn to peoples that are dying, and here two examples 

 will be sufficient, because of their vastness, because of the awful 

 reflection that in each case myriads upon myriads are being destroyed 

 by the hand of the Anglo-Saxon. 



1. The Australian. The Report of the Select Committee says, 

 " The effects of planting our penal settlements among them have been 

 dreadful beyond example, both in the diminution of their numbers 

 and in their demoralization;" and Bishop Broughton, quoted in the 

 same Report, says, " they do not so much retire as decay ; wherever 

 Europeans meet with them they appear to wear out and gradually to 

 decay ; they diminish in numbers ; they appear actually to vanish 

 from the face of the earth. I am led to apprehend that within a very 

 limited period, a few years at most, those who are most in contact 

 with Europeans will be utterly extinct — I will not say exterminated, 

 but they will be extinct." Such is the concurrent testimony of all 

 who are acquainted with Australia and Australian affairs, but this 

 evidence of the Bishop, endorsed by the Select Committee and cir- 

 culated by command of Parliament, is irresistible — no one will call it 

 in question. 



2. The Red Indian. Our earliest contact with the North- American 

 Indian is the date of his declension. The Select Committee's Report 

 savs it seems to have been for a length -of time accounted a meri- 

 torious act to kill an Indian, and Cotton Mather tells us that " it was 

 considered a religious act to kill Indians." But the English Puritans, 

 who it may be observed in passing were the most highly professing 

 religionists the world has yet seen, reduced the Indo-deslruclion to a 



